Moments
by Stoph Loves Cake
Summary: It's the moments that make us. All pairings, writing challenge. Oneshots exploring the one on one interactions of everyone's favorites. TxG, CxT, KxJ, now with SharpayxRyan.
1. Recipe

**AN:** To explain, this document is going to be a series of one-shots where I try and see if I can actually get into any of these characters' heads. I did it in the form of challenging myself to write a scene between the two people of every "popular" pairing that I saw after a few skim-throughs of other stories. Obviously, some came out better than others.

This story takes place in-between _High School Musical_ and _High School Musical 2_.

-

The recipe called for unsweetened chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, flour, salt, and walnuts. They decided to divide and conquer so, while Gabriella was searching the numerous cabinets, Troy went for the much simpler refrigerator. This wasn't his house, after all, and he felt that digging through a couple layers of cold condiments was easier than knowing which drawer went to what. All the usual things were there: pickles, mayonnaise, ketchup, milk, orange juice. One section seemed entirely devoted to packets of fruit of some kind, most of which Troy didn't recognize.

"So your mom likes to eat healthy, huh?" There was the noise of a half-oiled door opening and at first Troy thought that Gabriella hadn't heard him. He lifted his head from behind the fridge door and saw that she had stopped moving, a thoughtful expression on her face.

"Is there something in there?" She finally asked, nibbling on one side of her lip. The motion was small but extremely distracting for Troy and he nearly missed her continuing, "That's probably left-over from our first shopping frenzy. It's so exciting for my mom to shop in a new place so we just go a little crazy, you know?"

"I guess I can get that," he responded, still staring rather blankly at her mouth.

"But you guys don't get fruit fresh here like back in… the door's open." Her switch from conversational to blank fact was enough to make Troy glance all around the kitchen for this offending door. He hadn't _heard_ anyone come in... "Your door, Troy! The fridge door is open!" She was laughing, but maybe that was worse, and Troy's cheeks flushed as he stepped back and quickly shut the refrigerator.

"What a stickler," he teased her and she rolled her eyes,

"My mom just likes to conserve," She pushed away from the counter she'd been leaning against and moved to the center to dump her found items on the surface there. At the sight of the bottle of vanilla and packages of flour Troy remembered why he had been holding the fridge open in the first place.

"Jeez, girl, you are so bad for work!" he mock complained as he moved to the appliance for a second time and swung the door. The eggs were easy enough but it took a little digging to find a whole stick of butter. When he turned back around, Gabriella was already vanished in a crouch. The sound of shifting metal told him she was searching for an appropriate bowl or pan.

"Troy?" She called, "Can you preheat the oven?" Troy made a noise in the affirmative but his steps slowed as he neared the machine. Okay, so, it was time to fess up: his mother did _all_ the cooking; all the cooking that didn't involve a grill, at least, cause that his father approached with dangerous fervor. After a couple of seconds of staring at the dials, he coughed into his fist and abandoned pride for honest confusion,

"All I see is the regular temperatures."

Gabriella was suddenly standing next to him and ovens and their stupid dials were not important. Her dark hair was falling over her shoulders and around her face just… radiantly. Even the saddest look on her face seemed amazing. Right then, however, she just looked as confused as he felt before realization dawned. That was Gabriella, always figuring things out.

"Oh, Troy," she sighed with humor, "That's the same thing. Preheat just means that you're turning the temperature on before you actually put something in." She flipped the oven on, winked at him, and then skipped right out of the room.

Troy spent his alone moment pretending to bang his head against the free counter space, "Stupid, stupid, stupid." There was nothing he disliked more than making a fool of himself in front of her. She always responded graciously and, even when she teased him, he didn't feel like any less of a person – but that didn't mean that he didn't want to spend every second impressing her. It was a pressure comparable to trying to make that last three-pointer just as the buzzer rings.

When Gabriella returned it was with a phone in her hand. She gave Troy an apologetic look that shifted instantly when she suddenly had to say, "Hey, mom!" The recognizable pause followed where the other person – presumably… her mom – had to answer, then, "Troy and I are making brownies but I can't find the larger pan—"

As mother and daughter discussed, Troy turned away and idly began playing with the various magnets on the Montez's refrigerator. Most of them looked like they were from those gift-shops at the airport: "Montana welcomes you!" and that kind of thing. As Troy batted his finger against one in the shape of a pelican, he wondered what it would be like to have to move around so much. He couldn't even imagine leaving his team behind, his friends, and his house. There was just way too much invested there.

Crack! The sound of something smacking against the hard kitchen floor shocked him from his thoughts. Curiously, Troy looked around until he noticed that the small sad shape near his feet was the bottom half of a pelican. His head jerked up and he saw that the head was still morbidly frozen on the fridge. His horrified look went next to Gabriella whose mouth was caught in surprise.

"Gabriella, I—"

"Nothing, mom, just one of the magnets got loose again." He realized, then, that she was still on the phone and Mrs. Montez had been privy to hearing something in her house being broken – _broken by him_.

He was still cursing himself when Gabriella shut the cell-phone, stuffing it into her pocket and heading over to the fridge to see which state-representation had taken the fall. She bent to retrieve the pelican's body and Troy jerkily flopped down to try and get to it faster. They lightly knocked foreheads but Gabriella still came up with the broken magnet piece while Troy was trying to come up with an apology,

"Gabriella, I'm _so_ sorry. I didn't think it was just going to—"

"You're not the first person to break a magnet." His girlfriend reassured, turning and flashing him a pleasant smile, "But if you'd given me a concussion down there, I would've really hated you!" It didn't seem physically possible for there to be malice in Gabriella's voice, so the threat was null immediately.

"Yeah, well," Troy tried to defend his embarrassment, "It's just not a great impression to make." But they both let the subject drop and were soon digging through the cabinet Gabriella's mother had claimed held the pan they needed. "Your mother's crazy," Troy analyzed, his voice muffled by pots and plastic containers, "She was just playing you, wasn't she?"

"I guess it just doesn't get used that often," Gabriella giggled from the other side. Two different doors open into the same cabinet space and Troy had amused himself in the first couple of minutes by reaching inside and seeing if he could give Gabriella's shoulder a shove. After the attempts had started a war between them, they had managed to displace not just a couple of larger pots in one large waterfall of clattering metal and that soon ended that.

Not all of the dishes had made it back into the cabinet yet, and Troy eyed these suspiciously to see if any of them looked "nine by thirteen" to him.

"I've got it!" Gabriella's voice came to him and she victoriously pulled her head from her side to show him a pan he was pretty sure looked like every other one ever. Oh, well, if it made brownies better then he wasn't about to argue the case. She stood to "grease the pan" and he entertained himself with stealing sponges off the counter and shooting them inventively into the sink. He was spinning around and doing the hoarse "ahhh" of fake cheering when he spotted Gabriella staring at him. He froze, she grinned.

"Ready for some _real_ action, superstar?"

Troy honestly doubted that throwing some things into other things could beat the thrill of baskets, even sponge-related ones, but this was what he was here for, after all. Besides, you know, the obvious one of wanting to be around Gabriella. He was about to let the flour flow when she blocked him with a hand, "Not there," she instructed patiently, "We've got to melt the chocolate first."

"In our mouths?" Troy asked cheekily and she batted him on the shoulder before moving to the other side of the counter and producing a pot. "What's that for?"

"Melting," she placed it onto the stove and began fiddling with the knobs until a light blue fire sprang up underneath the intended grill. "Bring the chocolate annnnnd the butter over here."

He obediently retrieved both requested ingredients and watched her unwrap both and let each measured quantity plop onto the bottom of the pot. She seemed satisfied with this work and moved away. Troy stayed behind to stare expectantly at the two blocks of food. A curious glance showed him that the fire was set very low; no wonder nothing was melting yet. Troy twisted the dial under the flames flared hungrily and he could visibly see the chocolate wilting away and mixing with butter pools.

"Hey girl," he greeted, sliding over to where Gabriella was reading the written recipe and putting his hands on her upper arms, "What else have you got planned for us this evening?"

"Weelllll," she grinned but was distracted by the sound of something popping and fizzling. Her head whipped up and she twirled quickly out of his grip when she saw the blue flames licking at the edges of her saucepan. "Oh, jeez, how did that happen?" Troy lingered guiltily behind her as she turned the heat back down and watched the chocolate-butter bubble and gurgle excitedly. "I've never actually made these by myself," she explained as she turned and pulled out her cell-phone. A couple of seconds after dialing and she was saying, "Hey, mom, it doesn't matter how hot the chocolate gets, right? …. No, it's just… fizzling some… I wasn't sure if that meant it lost anything. Let it co—okay, yeah, okay."

There didn't seem to be any severe damage, so Troy didn't comment on this incident and instead just offered to help extra when eggs needed to be broken and sugar poured. He found out that letting a couple of shell pieces fall in was easier than admitting you'd messed up and vanilla didn't taste half as good as it smelled, but otherwise everything went by accident-free.

After this session of intense concentration, Troy was feeling anxious to get his arms around Gabriella again. She had hopped around the kitchen giving him instructions ever since the pan problem, so he wondered if she was taunting him for messing that up. But, finally, it seemed like there was a step where they would have to do some waiting – the electronic mixing.

He hurriedly shoved the beaters into their slots and wiggled the bowl into place. The recipe had quoted "high speed" so he cheerfully selected the highest number visible and watched the mixer come to life. That was supposed to continue for some minutes; Troy figured they would have a little private time to enjoy themselves. So he snuck over to where Gabriella was studying the recipe book and slapped his hands over her eyes, "Guess whoooo," he joked, more so because, well, there was seriously no competition for whom he was. She giggled a second but then gasped,

"Troy! The mixer—?"

"On," he assured, "I turned it on." But she was already trying to twist out from behind his hands,

"You shouldn't leave it unattended, how fast did you start it?" At her words, there was suddenly a stone in Troy's stomach – or maybe all of his organs had suddenly dropped into it. He hadn't realized that the settings on the mixer were all that important. As Troy dropped his arms and spun to check it, he felt the quick splatter of something wet but lumpy against his cheek. Slowly, unbelieving, he lifted a finger and wiped a bit from his face. Two of his fingers were smudged brown as the goopy mess trailed down their lengths and then plopped in a self-satisfied manner on the otherwise clean floor.

"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" Gabriella ducked under the shocked Troy's arm and hurried to where the mixer was whirring predatorily at them. It flung one defensive glop at Gabriella before she was able to slam the speed button and slow it to a duller spin cycle. She also had to make sure the beaters were locked into place; they weren't. When she wasn't looking, Troy ducked down and scooped the fallen chocolate mess off the floor with the same fingers and stuck it into his mouth.

"Well, we know it tastes good," he affirmed as optimistically as possible, "And would kick anyone's butt in a food fight." She grinned for his joke and he gave an inward sigh of relief. Usually Troy prided himself on being able to take any situation and roll with it but never before had he been the reason for all the disasters like this.

As he watched, Gabriella retrieved her cell-phone from out of her pocket. The customary moments passed before someone answered, "Hey, mom," she greeted, this time an ounce more sheepishly than last, "Uhh… yeah, still with the brownies—say, what's a safe setting for the mixer so you don't have to—oh, yeah, heh, okay. No, no problem." She flashed Troy a thumbs-up and he shot one back to her.

When the conversation had ended, he braced himself and asked, "So?"

"We have to watch the mixer, sorry," she admitted, moving back and double-checking the beaters before pressing the mixer back up to full-speed, "She says it isn't necessary as long as the beaters are set, but that it's always a good idea."

Troy huffed an overdramatic sigh and dropped himself onto a nearby stool. He was mostly teasing her, but he also had a great itch to get himself out of this kitchen. Doing anything with Gabriella always sounded like a good idea, but he was swiftly discovering that baking brownies wasn't the laidback bonding time he had hoped it would be. Apparently, some kind of work went into this.

The time in the mixer was followed by the blending of the rest of the ingredients into the dish. Troy let Gabriella do this and followed up by stirring in the nuts. Then they held the bowl together in order to pour it into the pan. With Troy still holding, Gabriella let go and used a spatula to scrap any lingering batter into place.

"Over!" She chirped, claiming the filled pan. Troy gave her a theatrical bow and then skipped over to the oven and jerked it open. His first impression was of a blast of hot air and he was immediately not endeared to the oven for the second time that afternoon. Gabriella giggled at what he presumed was the look on his face and carefully maneuvered the pan onto the first shelf.

Troy slammed the oven door shut with one triumphant push and then wiped his hands eagerly together, "Done and done!" According to that recipe, they had a good thirty-five minutes before anything else had to be tended to. Gabriella didn't seem to agree, as she was staring attentively at all of the dishes scattered about. "Later, laaaater," Troy coaxed, coming up behind her again and wrapping one arm around her waist, "They'll still be here when we get back."

Gabriella was about to argue, but she gave into the feeling of being close to him, "Yeah… I suppose so," when she turned, they were staring right into each other's faces and she could feel him release one warm, anxious breath onto her cheek. Sometimes she could tell that Troy was even more nervous than he let on. He expressed himself far better than any of his other friends, but he still hid just enough to make himself part of the male gender, as Taylor liked to put it. She wished momentarily that he would feel comfortable sharing absolutely _everything_ with her.

"Come on," he said with a grin and gently but insistently lead her from the kitchen. He was just really glad to get out of that room! Troy had a new sort of appreciation for his mother whenever she spent all day trying to whip something up – wasn't as easy as he originally believed!

But all thoughts of cooking soon escaped his mind as he had Gabriella give him a tour of the rest of the house. He would rather have not gone through picture albums and examined all of the various keepsakes they had gotten in different states, but Gabriella was enjoying talking about her life so he was glad to listen; anytime where he got to watch her be happy seemed right to him. He was struck with just how… girly their house was. Not that Gabriella and her mother were the cheerleader brand of chic or anything, but there really wasn't a single guy influence in the place. He felt vaguely intimidated so he directed their attentions outside.

The yard was small but serviceable and they played an especially pointless game of tag before rolling onto their backs in the grass and staring up at the forming clouds. Night was coming on so the sky was beginning to darken and a cool breeze eased them after all the running around.

Shifting himself closer to Gabriella, Troy maneuvered his arm underneath her body and pressed his hand against her shoulder. "It's great, huh?"

"It's beautiful," she smiled, a serener expression than when they were just playing games. He knew that, right then, she was appreciating the entire world, because that's just how generous Gabriella was with her friendliness. Maybe that's why he felt so comfortable with her… and yet, kind of dwarfed. She was so nice to everyone, did that really make him that much more special?

But she quelled his doubts by laying her head upon his shoulder and letting a hand rest lightly on his chest. The warmth of even the simplest touch erased all else and they laid there for quite some time. A couple of moments, Gabriella would shift but Troy's hand on her was always there to make sure they stayed close.

Troy was starting to drift off when an especially uncomfortable wiggle from Gabriella made him have to move as well. "Something wrong, beautiful?" he questioned drowsily.

"Bah," she dismissed, "I just got bit by something, that's all." They both started to settle back into place when the same realization hit boy and girl simultaneously. Bugs. Dark. Look at how dark it was outside. Time? How much time had gone by? Brownies! Troy and Gabriella scrambled to their feet in a unbalanced mass of limbs and it was a race for the door with Troy grabbing it open and Gabriella rushing into the open space provided.

A thick stream of brown was pumping menacingly from the top of the oven and the stink of it had already invaded the entire room. Gabriella froze in the doorway and began to cough. As if it would help, Troy went immediately to the oven and swung the door open. Rescue, rescue! Be free little brownies! But all that greeted him was a burst of pent-up smoke and the whiff of what had once been chocolate. He stumbled back and braced a steadying hand against the counter nearby.

"Oh, no, oh no, oh no!" Gabriella was now squeaking quietly behind him, jumping up and down on the balls of her feet and waving her hands to try and get some of the new smoke to clear away from her face. After a moment of this futile effort, she hurried to lean over the sink and crank the small window there open.

Still standing in front of the oven, Troy could now bend more easily over the carnage, "Who knew such little brownies could do so much!"

Gabriella was already fishing for her phone, "Hey, mom…." Her voice was somewhat distracted as she glanced all around the remains of their brownie battle with the kitchen, "Yeah, still—no… you see, there was a—" Gabriella didn't get to do anymore of the talking, she just started to listen to what her mother said and nodded gently to herself. She made one loop around the kitchen before the conversation was over.

"What did she say this time?" Troy asked as the cell-phone snapped shut. For a moment, it seemed like Gabriella wasn't going to answer him but then she turned, her lips pressed together severely,

"She says to get out of the kitchen, she's gonna come home and make us brownies."


	2. Distance

**AN:** This is actually the first one I wrote, and the only one with a running theme. Enjoy! Or don't... depending on how you feel about these two.

This story takes place in-between _High School Musical_ and _High School Musical 2_.

**-**

On one side of the wide school steps sat a girl whose black hair was pulled back out of her face and whose nose drew a determined line down to the Advanced Calculus text-book she was holding. She pressed her lips together in lofty concentration and carefully licked her finger before turning a page. The rubber soles of her cute but functional Slide sandals were planted in a no-nonsense manner on the step in front of her.

The other side of the steps bore a boy whose frizzled locks defied all other hair-styles before it and whose palms were mashed against his cheeks in unbridled frustration. He smacked his lips together to vocalize his boredom and unhesitatingly stuck a finger in his mouth to play with the Wrigley's Classic Bubble gum there. The worn toes of his Target bought sneakers tapped a senseless rhythm into the concrete in front of him.

Each second weighed heavily between them. The girl's mouth grew more determined and the boy's tennis shoe beat pounded out more insistently.

"Mmm**hm**," broke the silence in Taylor's all-knowing tone, "Implicit functions, you say…"

"Alright!" Chad shouted, interrupting any further talk about independent variables when he leapt to his feet and startled the book out of the girl's hands.

Having lost her page and her air of excellence, Taylor slammed the Calculus book shut between her hands and snapped, "Was that **really** necessary?"

"Uhh, yeah, it was," Chad's voice was thick and sarcastic. He unsettled that great distance between them by taking a firm step forward, making Taylor shift uncomfortably. She quickly put her hands up to fix her hair and cover the moment of weakness. And then, because it felt like balance, she got to her feet as well.

"Just because you're a **man­**--"

"We've been sitting here since two o'clock—"

"—doesn't always mean you need to act like—"

"—and you refused to talk to me after everyone else left—"

Taylor gave what she thought was a delicate sniff; Chad believed she sounded like a particularly indignant vacuum. "Well, if **someone** could get himself around…" All of the muscles in Chad's shoulders tensed and he stabbed his finger fiercely into the air. He felt threatening, he looked juvenile.

"I'm working on the car thing, Taylor," he reminded through gritted teeth as Taylor ran her tongue over her own.

"And I'm sure you're doing great," she conceded, taking a slow step in his direction, "But until then, I don't feel like hitching along with every jock who is going to some community ball game," she could see the question forming rebelliously in his eyes so she quickly added, "Any kind of ball. And because they always manage to get you to play. And, no, it's not fun."

Having been righteously cheated out of all of his demands, Chad fumbled a second for his anger and caught it on the rebound, "You've got all the answers, don't you? You're the 'smart one'."

"I am," there was no amount, metric nor standard, of humility in Taylor's voice, "Which is why I thought of a solution already."

Chad's eyebrows raised skeptically and they were lost behind masses of manly curls, "Well, why didn't you say that?"

The answer seemed simple enough, "You didn't ask."

Certainly simple enough to confuse the hell out of the boy, "You've never needed my permission to speak your mind before." In fact, the last time he had tried to stop her from talking he'd been lectured until his ears went numb. Taylor similarly remembered that important session of re-education, though with significantly less pain.

She took a firmer, more focused step towards him, "But I wanted you to ask," She could see the confusion on his face tightening back into irritation and her voice lost some of its own tension as if he'd snatched it away from her, "I want you to want to hear, Chad."

He rolled his eyes, strolling another few steps forward and spreading his arms wide, "How am I supposed to know that if you don't say anything?"

"You just… well you **are**," She called it Taylor's Theorem, as tribute, and it proved that a relationship (the function) made of a couple of arguments (variables) whose boyfriend (co-efficient) depended on the derivatives of that relationship at that point could be approximated by a differential opinion. In other words, the relationship should be able to fluctuate according to Taylor's will whenever and wherever she wanted it to. Somehow, guys were just never able to see these basic rules.

Meanwhile, Chad believed that this was a prime example of what he called Crazy Girl Behavior. In other words, girls were crazy and could not be trusted. He rewarded her keen argument with, "Riiight, cause that makes perfect sense". She huffed, she puffed, and then she crossed her arms firmly over her chest, muttering,

"I don't know why I even bothered!"

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like, it's not that hard," she scoffed, giving him a glance, "You ask me out and then run off to do something with your buddies while I'm supposed to watch. Not a very efficient use of my time."

"Efficient? What's that have to do with having fun? Maybe I'd like having conversations with you better if you didn't turn everything into…" He flung his arms up in dramatic despair, "I don't know, a business meeting."

Some of Taylor's severity had left her, but she still felt stubborn enough to insist, "That's not true."

"Well, it's pretty much what I get out of it. Dude, it's like you're constantly evaluating everything I do. And that's makes me **really** uncomfortable." He let out each word fierce and pronounced. She contemplated a moment, watched the honesty on his face, and wondered for a brief second if her attitude drove him to seek out his comfort zones, even when supposedly on dates. He saw her calculating gaze and wondered, as usual, if she was cooking up some wordy reason for why he was in the wrong.

The rebuttal he was waiting for never came. Instead, Taylor's arms clenched tighter around herself and she turned away. She liked to accuse boys of hiding and forgetting, but this boy was putting it all out on the table and suddenly the blame arrow was stabbing her in the forehead.

It wasn't until this moment, when she refused to look at his face, that Chad felt a pang of guilt. He was confrontational and he knew it; it made him a keen sports man, but apparently a lousy date one. The distinct loss of what could have been a perfectly good day crawled up his back like an itch he couldn't reach, "This is all wrong. This was **supposed** to be a date." There was not even the slightest hint of the word 'sorry' in there, but this was Chad's version of an apology and would have to be taken for what it was. Taylor recognized this phenomenon from all the times that Troy and Chad had an argument.

"It can be," she sighed, sounding decidedly less appliance-like, "We're just going to have to work together." When she turned to look him seriously in the eye she realized for the first time that they had almost completely closed the once great distance between them.

"Yeah, cause you—" Chad was stopped by Taylor's suddenly raised hand,

"Don't ruin it." She said sharply, and affectionately. Her ability to sound simultaneously loving and condescending both fascinated and annoyed Chad. He lifted his hand to hers and page-turning fingers met gum-friendly ones. When she shifted, her carefully preserved sandal platforms bumped up against the toes of shoes that had seen much abuse. All of their differences didn't seem quite so big anymore.

A loud smack of his bubble-gum and then Chad's face broke into a grin for the first time since the clock had struck two, "Me? Ruin? Noo. I'm too wonderful." She wanted greatly to agree but she couldn't afford him that win; she had to be strong for all woman-kind. Instead, she allowed him a smile full of her usual contradictions,

"For a basketball ape, at least," The brain in Taylor wasn't completely satisfied with the way the discussion had ended, but the heart in her wouldn't let her linger on it too long when he was standing **that close**. Underneath all the learning, she was still a girl. She had still celebrated unabashedly when he'd asked her on that first date. What girl couldn't appreciate the attentions of a talented boy? You just had to make sure that the attention stayed on you, and not the closest sports equipment. It was a game, really- the game of dating Chad.

Recognizing that she was debating with herself rather than with him, now, Chad knew that he had won. There was always some kind of disagreement looming in their near future, but it didn't seem all that bad if it meant spending more time with her. She was really something else to hang out with, maybe because she didn't just fall instantly for everything he did. Sure wasn't easy to please her, but maybe that was good. After all, what kind of guy backed away from a challenge? No, a test! Taylor was a math exam and a half.

"Okay, my little hottie," he crooned, pulling their joined hands towards him, "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, my favorite man," she hummed, hooking her fingers onto the top of his pants, "I'm happy to explain."

And now, in the middle of the wide school steps stood a boy and a girl whose hands were twisted inescapably around each other's. She moved her lips in enthusiastic explanation and he pressed his together to try and contain a smile. Soon, rubber soles and sneaker bottoms would be stepping out a complimentary rhythm as they moved away down the concrete in front of them.


	3. Score

**AN:** This one was... pretty bad to start with. But when I went over it later, it more than doubled in length and improved in a lot of places. Still, I don't think Kelsi nor Jason are ever going to be the main focuses of any of my stories.

This story takes place pre-_High School Musical_.

**-**

It was twelve minutes after nine on a Tuesday and that meant one very important thing for Kelsi Nielson - free period. It only came every other day, but it was always worth waiting for. You see, free period was that magical time when the good students were doing extra credit, the not-so-good students were doing homework due the next period, the bad students weren't doing any kind of homework at all, and Kelsi was claiming the theater all for herself. It was probably the only time when she could dare such a feat. Even Sharpay and Ryan didn't use up their free period on stage when they had one; Sharpay usually trolled the hallways and found new and scarier ways to make herself more popular. The phenomenon that was the Evans siblings would always astound Kelsi. She had been caught up in the whole mess when she'd naively approached Ms. Darbus about the Drama Club her first year.

Afterwards, Kelsi had heard all sorts of strange rumors about how fellow freshman Sharpay had usurped the club but she knew that the reality wasn't quite as spectacular. East High's theater department just hadn't been that amazing and the energy – and, honestly, talent – that the Evans had brought in made them easy stars. After that, tons of kids had tried out for plays, and signed up for Choir when they didn't make it, but only Kelsi had been unfortunate enough to have a "shining ability" able to make Sharpay's head turn.

She described the events as 'unfortunate' now, but the truth would always be that Kelsi was flattered – overwhelmed, really, to be thought of as important enough to be talked to. Sharpay took all the credit for herself and flippantly shot down most of Kelsi's ideas, and yet Kelsi always returned to the music for her. There wasn't a single song that Sharpay had asked to be rewritten that Kelsi hadn't mutilated at her command. If this was the business, then Kelsi would have to put up with people like Sharpay to be in it. And she wanted to be in it. But sometimes, just sometimes, it was nice to imagine what some of her music would sound like when not Evans-ized.

And that was what twelve minutes after nine was for. Kelsi time, music time. A time not to be disturbed by anyone or anything – especially not by someone she didn't know, someone who had no business at all being in the theater whether it was free time or rehearsal time. So, it was completely understandable that she gave a loud squeal when she felt the touch of a hand on her shoulder. Understandable, and yet no less embarrassing.

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes wide, Kelsi spun on the piano bench to identify her assailant. However, even once she was staring into his face she couldn't put a name there. All that really clicked was the bright red of his sports jersey. Oh, and how weird it was that someone was wearing their jersey in the middle of the school day.

"Hi!" the unidentified sports player greeted before unceremoniously flopping onto the bench beside her.

"Umm, hi," she returned, scooting as far to the side as she could without sending herself to the floor. She wasn't used to being addressed by strangers – she was barely even addressed by Sharpay – and it was doubly nerve-wracking not to know how to react.

"I got distracted on the way to practice," the strange boy was explaining, meanwhile, tugging on the edge of his jersey. Kelsi wondered if the rest of the team just let him wear the uniform to every impromptu practice so he wouldn't forget that they were playing basketball in the middle of the game.

It wasn't her place to question him, but it wasn't really his place to be in the theater, either, so she dared, "Won't your teammates miss you?"

"Your music is nice," The sudden and unrelated compliment caught Kelsi completely off-guard. It wasn't just that he had given her a compliment – strange enough – but the absurd plainness of it. She almost automatically disagreed, but the boy wasn't done, "I came in here to say something but I forgot…" A light – dim at best – showed in his eyes, "Maybe it was that your music was nice…"

Kelsi stared at him until she noticed that he had stopped talking and was staring right back, "T-Thanks," she finally managed, leaning forward and fumbling to reorganize a few of the song's pages. Her music was not only a great past-time but also a convenient prop to pretend to look busy with, "I kind of got, um, got inspired by Musetta's Waltz one time—"

"Hey, I think I know that one," He interjected, put two fingers on the piano keys, and began to pound out a rhythmically challenged rendition of "Chopsticks". Kelsi was so stunned by what she was hearing that she sat frozen through one and a half whole play-throughs before throwing her hands between his and the piano he was abusing. She wondered if he was really _that _bad or if he was _that _bad but still thought he was doing something right. The completely serious way with which he was watching the keys made her think the latter, or maybe that he had some deep-seeded anger at pianos from a childhood mishap. This particular instrument had been replaced their freshman year, also, because Sharpay had insisted that the old one was not in-tune with her. Kelsi hated to think of how the diva would react if she saw a jock pounding away on it.

"Great!" she squeaked when she felt her voice had returned and then, to distract him, "Your name? What's your name?"

"Jason!" Now that she thought about it, she felt like she had heard his voice somewhere before; the enthusiastic way that he delivered the most random things seemed familiar. He waited a moment before asking, "What's **your** name?"

She wiggled uncomfortably. This much unwavering focus on her was **not** a part of her comfort zone. In that one awkward moment she wished that Sharpay was standing there to take all of the pressure off of her. But there was no click of rescuing heels, no shining smile to turn all heads. There was just her, and there was just him, and there was still his question. So, she swallowed her reluctance, "It's Kelsi,"

"Keeeelsi," he parroted proudly, "That's right. I see you in home-room. You're a couple rows ahead of me. You wears hat, too." He emphasized this by batting the front of her Military hat and it fell over her eyes- she didn't try to fix it. His analysis of her proved that one, she was right about the home-room thing, and two, he actually knew more about her than she did him just by that much. When she thought about him sitting those rows behind her, watching her enough to remember who she was, she grew red in the face again.

"Hey, Jason, it's g-great to meet you, but I've got some… some things I have to do!" Her music was scooped up in one messy sweep and she pressed it protectively against her chest. He looked sad a second, his eyebrows drawn close, but gave up on it soon enough. She could tell that he didn't spend a lot of time concerning himself with the depressing moments of life.

Instead, he leapt eagerly to his feet and grinned goofily, "Okay," he said, waving a hand in good-bye, "I guess I'd better get back, too. It was nice to meet you. Maybe I'll see you after…." The happiness faded as his memory obviously had.

"Your practice," the girl supplied with a kind of fascination. Jason regained his sense of purpose and his grin with her reminder. Bobbing his head in a kind of 'yeah, yeah, that was it' fashion, he strolled out of the theater, quite obviously satisfied with the way the entire encounter had gone.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Kelsi was struck confused and it didn't seem like she was going to be able to recover any time soon. Not only had someone spoken with her privately, but he had done so casually and without ulterior motive. The simplicity of Jason's conversation, the dopey grin that never wanted to be replaced – all of it wavered between perplexing and relaxing. Unable to wrap her mind around music anymore, Kelsi was forced to spend the rest of her free morning wondering what had happened during the beginning of it. When the bell rung forty minutes later, demanding that she return to her reassuringly predictable day, all that she had gleaned was this: she didn't get basketball players, she certainly didn't get Jason… but she also didn't feel pressured to or judged for it.

And that was pretty okay.


	4. Routine

**AN:** Wow. Major delay between these because the computer they were stored on crashed - so, apologies for that. Now I'm back on track. 

Anyway, regarding the writing itself- I became a big fan of Ryan in the first movie which means that I enjoy him pretty dumb. I had a fairly hard time throughout all the one-shots trying to reconcile first movie Ryan with second movie Ryan as I saw it, so I'm not sure how well this all turned out. Oh well, what else is exercise for? 

This takes place pre-_High School Musical_. 

**-**

This particular room hadn't always been an empty studio, lined with ceiling high mirrors and practice bars. No, it had once been an extra guest-room, a particularly expensive suite. However, wherever the Evans went, so moved their dancing, and the apartment had been vacated entirely to become one gigantic wooden-floored space in which to celebrate the arts. Occasionally there was a piano in back for Ryan to play quietly while Sharpay practiced her tap-dancing, but it had been removed earlier upon Sharpay's request that it replace the one in the main hall that sounded like it was dying – dying and trying to take all of them with it.

Without the piano, there was nothing to block Sharpay from her multitude of smiling reflections. And that was exactly how she liked it. Making sure that everything went perfectly was especially important that year. The previous one, she and her brother Ryan had been able to establish themselves as East High's up-and-coming theatre superstars but it was still left to show the school just how dazzling she was. If all eyes weren't watching her when she walked down the hall, then something was wrong. If nobody knew that "superior" was synonymous with her name, then something was wrong. If the theatre wasn't instantly associated when someone said "Evans", then something was _wrong_. And _nothing_ was allowed to be that wrong.

She had an identity to protect, after all. And it was an identity that she shared with the young man standing next to her, so it was absolutely vital that he understand just as well. "Ryan," she snapped and his eyes immediately met hers.

"What's up, Shar?" Ryan had been staring off, imagining that he was meeting all of his most favorite movie actors, and the return to reality left him startled – and disappointed. Sharpay saw the blank look still trying to leave his face and took it for a clean slate just waiting to be shaped. She put a patronizing hand on his shoulder,

"Soon it won't matter that I'm not a vapid cheerleader and you fail mightily at basketball," Ryan wanted to point out that Sharpay was no basketball champ, herself, but this didn't feel like the right time; she was on a roll, "Because when you get out of this teen trap they call high-school, there awaits the place just fabulous enough for me. Yes, soon, it will all be much better—"

Swept up in the glory of the moment, Ryan interjected, "When we're in Hollywood!"

His sister shot him that look that said he had gotten something wrong and Ryan quickly tried to figure out where he'd erred. But 'quickly' for Ryan was something more akin to 'agonizingly slow' and it took several long moments before he could look questionably down at Sharpay and offer, "When we're on Broadway?"

She sighed the sigh of the long-suffering and wondered what wicked twist of fate had decided she needed to have such a trying brother. I mean, she understood how he couldn't possibly be as amazing as her, but did some malfunction at a young age program in that weird obsession with jazz squares? It certainly wasn't _her_ teaching. Sometimes Sharpay envisioned herself going back and giving their old dance instructor what's what but she never could find the time in her precious schedule.

"Just get back on your mark," she instructed and he scampered to obey. The immediate reaction was one of the most reassuring things in life. There were so many frustrating people in the world, she didn't know if even her immense patience would survive if she didn't have her brother there to show how it should be done. Well, maybe he wasn't _quite_ so trying, then.

As if to dispute that, as they were practicing a spin together, Ryan missed his cue. At Sharpay's noise of disapproval, he twisted hard to compensate. The look of complete surprise on his face was the only warning before both twins crashed to the ground. Sharpay, having been stationary, was only taken down with the pressure of Ryan's arm holding hers and she was treated with an uncomfortable ache in her butt but nothing else. She checked the heels of both shoes before pushing to her feet and dusting herself off. The room was, in fact, immaculate, but she always felt disgusting after being on the ground. The disaster, himself, was still downed and she cleared her throat impatiently.

Having been turning on his spot when he lost his balance, Ryan had rotated in the air and met the wooden floor with his chest and hands – and luckily _not_ his face. He moved onto his knees and then to his feet at his sister's demand but hesitated there, the right side of his body sagging when he instinctively took weight off the left.

Sharpay could sense trouble – she could _smell_ injury – and disbelief boiled before anger. Was it serious? Of course it was serious! Now he'd never be able to dance at full ability; at this point, strain versus sprain didn't matter because it was still going to interrupt practice. What kind of stupid setback was _that_? If it wasn't one thing then it was another!

But Ryan neither complained nor commented. In fact, he watched her rather expectantly until she threw up her hands and shouted, "Idiot!" to appease his wait for criticism. If he wasn't going to say anything, then she certainly wasn't going to bother herself about it, so Sharpay moved back into her spot and commanded, "Again!" with a flip of her hair. She missed entirely the roll of Ryan's eyes; he wasn't sure why his sister always took his silence for a need to be insulted, but then again, he wasn't really sure why he kept trying to give her a chance to do anything else as well.

Sharpay counted off and they made it through the same spin but there was a range of quick movements after, including a switch-up that required Ryan to skip a circle around her. As he passed by she could see that the show smile they always wore looked forced- and that was breaking, like, the number one performance rule. She didn't immediately call him out, but continued to watch.

The strain on her brother's face became more and more evident, despite his best efforts to hide it. Every time he shifted his weight to his left side his eyebrows would draw briefly together. His obvious distraction during otherwise routine moves was more evidence that he was concentrating hard on not revealing his weakness to her. It was stupid of him not to say anything, Sharpay thought, to think that she wanted to continue through a less than perfect run-through, but she wasn't going to give him a break or anything. Still, the longer they pushed through the choreography, the sourer everything tasted to Sharpay.

"You know," she snapped suddenly, "I don't even feel like practicing anymore. You've killed my creative spirit, Ryan. Go—I don't know, whatever it is you do when I'm not around," With no more warning than that, she spun hard on her heels and strutted purposefully out of the dance room. She paused only once, at the doorway, in order to cast a careful glance back at her brother. He wasn't looking at her but was staring determinedly at his reflection. Sharpay viciously wondered for a moment if he was going to try and bark at his own image like her Yorkshire terrier did.

A long minute started passing by and Sharpay began to think that she'd have to find some sort of excuse to go back in the room. She hadn't moved a muscle since she'd stopped at the door and the strain was beginning to tell. Finally, Ryan sat down. The second he was off the injured ankle, she turned and completed her stroll away.

Really, was he _completely_ hopeless without her? Sometimes, it seemed like it and that told Sharpay that she'd be stuck with him for the rest of his life. Well, he'd better enjoy her sacrifice!


End file.
